Here’s why you’re not utilizing the power of big data to the fullest

Erica Silva, Negosentro | The amount of data in the world is changing the way we lead our lives, and this amount is doubling every year. Data worldwide is growing 40 percent per year, a rate of growth that is daunting – Forbes

However, only 0.5% of this data is being utilized to revolutionize business processes. The trick here is to use this massive amount of raw data and turn it into a mighty stream of new opportunities. If your company is not doing that, your strategy will soon fade away. Other entities with data analytics will outrun your campaigns by using the data at hand. We have made a list of benefits your company can acquire if you dive into the world of big data analytics and use them to power your business process:

Lean Management

The Lean methodology is all about avoiding the clutter and focusing on things that matter in business. When you reduce the waste, you can truly focus on what is essential for your business process. Big data helps in industries where the amount of waste is high (chemical industry, the pharmaceutical industry, etc.). You can plan by capacity, improve your inventory and reduce waste by predictions powered by Big Data.

Walmart is a great example here which works on a Retail Link System which logs every product as a data point. Walmart system does not require the installation of expensive software; they only need a computer with the software from Walmart and a standard browser. The reason behind this policy is that Walmart’s future strategy heavily involves increased business analytics.

Hiring talent

If you are not using Big Data in the hiring process, you are surely missing out on a lot of insights. Big Data can help you identify the red flags during a hiring process. It enables business owners to find out loopholes in the recruitment process and stages where a candidate is likely to drop out. The primary metric is volume which is used to predict patterns in hiring. Your employee recruitment cost can go down significantly because you will avoid the past mistakes. Boston Red Sox is a famous team which used this technology during their team building projects. Rather than going for the expensively priced players, the General Manager of Red Sox went for players who were complementary and brought higher success rate at lower costs. Their statistics were high, and they became a great asset to the team.

The 2013 Red Sox shocked all of the baseballs by rising from worst to first and winning the World Series, its third championship in a decade. The outcome surprised the baseball pundits and Las Vegas gamblers, and proved, among other things, that hiring analytics was a potent method for measuring talent.

Marketing efficiency

Big Data insights will completely change your marketing game. Personalization can go on a whole new level using big data analytics. If you are not using the power of customization, you are missing out on exciting new marketing opportunities. When you create predictive models through big data, you can also look at signs of error and success in those models. Your marketing department can gain actionable insights from customer interaction and act upon them.

McKinsey found out that companies which are using the power of Big Data and analytics in marketing improve the marketing return on investment by 15-20 percent. An air cargo company filtered Big Data analytics to find out the supply and demand numbers of their air freight dynamics. They created an interactive dashboard which ran on competitive pricing. With the power of this analytics, they got a 20 percent boost in their wallet share. Wallet share is a marketing metric used to calculate the percentage of a specific consumer’s spending for a type of good or service that goes to a particular company

Beating the competition

In the past, learning about competitors was not very straightforward. Competitor news was primarily propagated by gossips and rumors. Thanks to the digital age and Big Data, we have moved past the rumors. We can gain in-depth competitor analysis through tools which are available online. Unlock Insights is one of those tools. It helps you get a full report on various aspects of the competitor’s performance. Google Trends can also offer insights into the popularity of a brand or a product. Other than Trends, you can also perform Twitter analysis through Unlock Insights to make segmented reports about your competitor.

All this data gathered through tools can effectively improve your brand. You can see what the competitor is doing wrong and what they are doing right. Using this information, you can devise better strategies which can surpass the success of your competitor.

Engaging customers

Big data lets you segment your audience based on various criteria and deliver relevant messages to each category of customers. You can also approach leads in this way and get the most out of them. Segmentation can only happen by collecting data gathered by transactions which occur on your social mediums or website over time. Using this data, you will know the habits of your active users and reasons why someone is not interacting with your online platforms. If there are users who spend a lot of time on your site, you can send them promo codes with 15% off on next purchase. If there are people who browse the site but bounce off, you can send them a surprise voucher to nurture them into leads.

Boost the bottom-line

You can gain more profound business insights with Big Data which can help you boost your bottom-line. When you understand your target customers better, you can devise better plans to attract these customers. Businesses which keep in mind the needs of their customers grow more revenue through practical strategies. Big Data helps the most in predicting the outcomes of a campaign. You can invest in the right areas, reduce costs and generate more revenue by following a customer-centric approach.

Last word

Keeping in mind the amount of data which is generated every year, it is your responsibility to filter the good from the bad and turn it into a useful commodity. Big data business analytics are an integral part of any business system now. The sooner you incorporate this system into your business, the better. “The fact that [the data] gets collected is a good thing,” says Andreas Weigend, former Chief Scientist of Amazon, now director of the Social Data Lab and lecturer at UC Berkeley. “It’s up to society to creatively ask the right questions.”

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ABOUT Erica Silva

Erica Silva is a blogger who loves to discover and explore the world around her. She writes on everything from marketing to technology, science and brain health. She enjoys sharing her discoveries and experiences with readers and believes her blogs can make the world a better place.

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